SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII: Designing For My Table

 

I had a system I thought worked. SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII was originally meant to be Rooted in Trophy, with strong on-the-fly scenario creation. Play was supposed to be character-focused, fast, and unpredictable, with the seat-of-your-pants being attached to a rocket. It was meant for the times when someone couldn't show up to a session of one of my longer-running games. People could still play, have a great time, and move on, all in between an hour to two and a half hours.

I just scrapped most of the mechanics and started over.

Don't get wrong, I loved the mechanics! They produced interesting results. Trophy's got some seriously awesome mechanics behind it and I can't wait to finally play me some Trophy Gold with the hardcover I ordered. Trophy Dark is just boatloads of fun. Once I get some more development of this game and Crescendo done, further down the line, I think I'll do some Trophy Dark scenarios. I love just how evocative the whole line of Trophy is.

But the problem is that I want a one shot that can do a game in an hour and a half to two hours, maybe two and a half hours. I don't get a whole lot of time to game, doing it after the kids are put down for the night. Which is late. I also don't want it to jump into another session, as usually when a player misses they only miss the one session. So that makes it a pain to include him or just... wait until the next time he misses? I guess? I know this isn't necessarily a problem for everyone, or even really anyone but me, but... I kinda have to be able to test the game I designed! I also wonder if other older players don't run into this problem as well. How many games are designed for more time-intensive singular sessions of play, and are thus inaccessible to folks with small kids? Not sure, but I'm in the situation so I can't help but design for it. 

The other problem is that I am a bit of a rolling junkie. I really like Trophy's rolling mechanics, as stated before, and found that I was constantly calling for rolls. My testers went with it because they're good people, but I could tell they just wanted to let the game breathe for a minute. So I decided to make it a mostly-diceless game. where you build up experience chits to eventually get to the decisive roll, the moment of truth, in each act. This strips the mechanical overload to a fraction of what it currently was, with still some back and forth, as players have to negotiate around getting chits for the end of the act versus how that affects the narrative in the meantime.

The biggest problem, of course, was the scenario generation. I'd built a system to make up a scenario with players on the fly, and it's a lot of fun! It made for some hilariously wonderful conversations. The problem? It took too long. The point wasn't to make a cool scenario, but to finish the scenario in a short amount of time. Fortunately the solution was simple: the GM just comes up with the scenario beforehand. Character creation is short enough to where players can just roll at the top of the session, but obviously making characters beforehand is polite.

There's a lot to be said for the older version of SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII. But you have kill your darlings if they don't work. And this didn't work. I want something fast and decisive. And the earlier draft just wasn't doing it. Further playtesting is necessary, but I think I'm on the right track.

Spider-Man 94: Season Five, Part One

 

I really dislike this version of Captain America. He doesn’t seem to have a stable character. Over the course of this season you could hand almost any of his lines to anyone and it would be fine.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I like the first part of this season in theory. Peter shouldn’t stay single and miserable. Not only should Peter grow up but he really does have leadership material in him' Cable’s estimation of Spidey as the best superhero still doesn’t do Peter justice. Peter Parker is the Uncle Ben of the Marvel universe, and Marvel’s utterly insane need to keep him single and miserable shows just how creatively (not to mention morally) bankrupt the company has become. 

That being said: dear God this arc is a mess. 

While it is cool the Six Forgotten Warriors arc puts Spidey in a situation where he has to step up… not like this. Please. The Spider-Sense is nerfed in the most idiotic of ways, with scenes where it goes off and Peter just sits there, remarking on it… and then he gets hit. I got jarred out of this arc so many times I just couldn’t enjoy it. Electro is one of the few villains in this show that I just can't care about. It's not that he's a Nazi, although that doesn't help. There's nothing to him that I sympathetic at all. He wants power, to the exclusion of his relationship with his dad? That felt wrong to me. If you can take a character as pathetic and awful as Morrie Bench and make him sympathetic... you can probably do it with a Nazi.

Oh, and speaking of plot convenience, MJ gets hurt in this arc, in the most ham-fisted way possible. For a regular show? This is bad. It's plain ole bad writing. But for this show, which had done Mary-Jane so well? It's easily the worst writing in the show. This is something I'd see out of a bad/modern comic book, not this show. Period. I've ghosted shows for less.

But there's nostalgia.

So.

On I went.

But there's a lot of good to this arc, contrary to what the above rant would indicate. This is easily one of the biggest swings at Spidey lore ever done. Peter has to step up. It's not a question. The connection to his family is a fantastic hook and got me invested immediately. And they play up that angle really nicely! Peter's idea of his parents, the only thing he has left of them, is challenged, and he has to resolve the identity crisis, immediately. It's such a good hook that I wasn't really jarred by the bad writing until MJ got hurt.

And that ending scene, with MJ telling Peter to still be Spidey, that it's not a question of one or the other, that he has a responsibility to both her and  the world... I have nothing but love for this scene. Regardless of how clumsy the delivery was, getting to this scene was truly worth it. I really miss this aspect of Spider-Man: the idea of expanding responsibility, of love creating more opportunities for goodness, not just hardship. It's the next step of that arc.

And I have nothing but bile for Marvel's decision to steer away from it.

Part Two Next Week!

Power Rangers RPG Early Game Review

 

This is going to be a really odd review. On the one hand, I've never had so much fun with a combat-focused game. The combat is really rewarding and people can really let loose! What an experience! On the other hand, I've never seen a published book so badly edited and laid out. It's the definition of a mixed bag. If you're okay with learning how to get around the rulebook this game is genuinely a blast to play, working for a wide variety of ages and affections for the franchise.

Also: this a review that covers my impressions of the book and gameplay up to level five. I don’t feel confident talking about high level play yet, and I feel that will be its own review. I fully intend to get there. So stay tuned!

You'll see a lot of licensed products get by just on the hype. And that's not wrong (more on that later), but that is not the case for Power Rangers gameplay. This game definitely has the chops to not just be for fans.  Improvising is rewarded and spamming of actions is discouraged. There's two ways they achieve this: low HP and allowing improv actions to be the equal of regular attacks. Low HP means that you can't just rush into combat. You have to have a plan, and everyone has to be on the same page. One wrong hit and you’re out of the fight! Improving your HP with leveling isn't automatic, meaning you have to put in resources you’d normally use for offense to survive hits. And even then, you won't be getting that much more HP. So at best you'll be using your HP as a resource for your team, as opposed to breaking gameplay and removing risk. The damage in the game is also lowered and flattened, with all damage dice removed. This means that improvised attacks aren't outpaced by "regular" attacks. So if you want to just spam attacks, over and over? It does exactly the same as people who are being creative. Given that being creative is usually more fun than spam.... creative actions actually become more rewarding, because of the mechanically even playing field. That might sound a bit odd, but that’s what I’ve found at my table, and so that’s what I have to report. I also really appreciate the Power Point system. It allows for some really neat tricks without going overly much into straitjacketing how you do those tricks.

Character building (once you've gotten over the book) is a lot of fun. While the customization looks sparse, it's actually extremely robust, and possibly even broken, depending on how far you're willing to push getting perks. Each ranger color is its own class, granting you a series of well-defined roles. Red is the leader, black the buffer, blue is support, pink is tac-nuke, green the lone striker, and yellow the combo master. The colors themselves are really straightforward, with the origins (more like beginning stereotypes!) and influences making your character unique. As stated before, it's the perks that really make characters stand out. One of the perks lets you change your ranger color (multiclassing) and another let’s you choose from an advanced spectrum color (redo, essentially). There's a lot of variety in a very small amount of space. I’ve made more than a few characters and never felt like characters were being pigeonholed, as there was enough structure for everyone to have solid expectations of each other, but enough room for some surprises and individuality. That being said, I’ve home brewed some perks and found the examples in the book to be helpful in reverse engineering for my table. I’ve not had a dissatisfied player yet!

Granted, any ranger can do this with the right perk:

And thats not not elicited an excited giggle from all my players, regardless of age. So that may be a low bar. Dunno. Up to you and all that.

The role playing systems in this book are pretty middle of the road. The Power Rangers RPG is a combat storygame with obvious inspiration from 5e… to its detriment. Characters have Origins and Influences. Both words are not very indicative of what the concepts actually are: stereotypes and life paths. Origins provide base health, some initial spread of skills, and a base personality type. Influences are where the details are: it gives the stereotype you picked some nuance. You can have as many Influences as you like, and are given some guidance on how to modify the ones provided to get a concept you want. Influences also have the elements that most directly impact story point gain:  Perks, Hang-Ups, and Bonds. Perks are special options you gain from that Influence, Hang-Ups are really wordy flaws (which give you disadvantage in certain situations) and Bonds… are even wordier character traits. The origins of Bonds are clearly from 5e, and they really are too large for players and GMs to remember and challenge. I GM’d Burning Wheel two to three times a week for approximately three years, which is far chunkier and much more involved. The problem isn’t that Bonds are complicated, but that they’re unwieldy for the amount of mechanical weight they have on them. Even the Hang-Ups are overly verbose, in need of an actual editing pass. None of this is insurmountable, but the system is getting in its own way here. 

The Story Points mechanic is similarly mixed. On the one hand, the designers clearly made the game to need Story Points, which is good. You want the game to be mean enough to necessitate the actions you take to get the Story Points. Having fudged more than a few rolls for my kids I can tell you the system needs the Story Points. But there’s six ways to spend them! Six! My players in Burning Wheel had trouble remembering one type of expenditure for two (occasionally three) types of metacurrency! I have GM’d a good dozen sessions of this game and still couldn’t tell you what the hell all the uses for Story Points are. There’s also two pools: one for the GM and one for the players, each with their own requirements for increasing their own respective pools. This isn’t insurmountable, but if any page of the book has to be printed and given to each player as a handout, it’s page 91, where all the information on Story Points resides. But again, once you get the hang of it you’ll find a system that’s satisfying to use, one which rewards good RP and problem solving. 

Now for the bad: the actual book. The art's lovely, but the actual layout and editing is a nightmare. I own more than a few RPG books and have learned quite a few systems over the years.... and I had to get help. Flat out. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it! Fortunately the Power Mafia Discord group is composed almost entirely of helpful people who have figured out how to play this game and are willing to share their knowledge. I highly recommend going there after a quick look through the book. They're friendly and knowledgeable. Once I found the information in the book I could figure out the logic, but this is what it looks like when one of the designers is editor! I'm in the middle of writing my own game and the sheer amount of typos that other people find in my own text is more than enough proof that you need someone a bit more separate from the work to look it over. That didn’t happen here, by the credits on the inside cover.

I do not like the zord combat rules. I do not use them. I find them to be unusable. I'm sorry, it's just that simple. There's nothing kind to say about them, as they strain character resources to a degree I just don't find fun. I have use the Zord autopilot rules as the base ones to acceptable effect and have found the Zord customization rules acceptable enough. This part of the game needs work.

But it gets worse. The ugliest part of the game is the absolute lack of any advice on building combat encounters and monsters. The outcry over this was so intense that Renegade released these guidelines for free, but the lack of those guidelines being in the book is a severe black mark for me, particularly because there's not a whole lot of monsters in the book to begin with! I'm honestly baffled by this decision, given just how many thousands of monsters Power Rangers has had in its 25+ year reign. Decades of awesome Japanese rubber suits and there’s barely enough to run even a campaign, nevermind multiple! Given just how weird Power Rangers monsters are it would have been really simple to set up a crazy monster generation system. But the lack of support in a book that claims to be a one stop shop is just criminal.

And honestly that may be too much for any reader of this blog post. I find that sad, because this game is a lot of fun and encourages creativity in a way I've not seen a lot of combat focused games manage. It's ultimately up to you if you want to take a swing at the game, but hopefully with an indication of the flaws of the product in mind. I've been playing with my kids (it's simple enough to where you don't have brain overload managing mechanics) and with other folks and have found that this game is worthwhile for me. Despite Renegade's errors with the text their design acumen really can't be denied.

I’d also like to throw a shoutout to the fantastic customer service at Renegade. The binding on the book appears to be sewn (I’m terrible at telling things like that), but pages began to fall out of my initial copy of my book. I’d done nothing to the book to warrant such an outcome. I contacted customer service and they sent me a new book within a few days. They were polite and horrified that my book hadn’t lived up to reasonable expectations. I’ve contacted them a few times for other issues in the past and have always found Renegade’s customer service to go above and beyond what I expected. And I do think that’s a part of the picture that’s worth relating to you.

Power Rangers the RPG has some fantastic ideas, great gameplay, and really unhelpful layout and editing. If that doesn’t scare you off I think it’s worth the time. I’ve had a blast and so have my players. It’s worth the effort, I think. But if that’s not what you want to do? I totally understand. 

Spider-Man 94: Season Four

After a lackluster third season Spider-Man 94 had a lot of scrambling to do. And, while I was afraid they'd completely lose their touch at first, the fourth season manages to bounce back. By sticking with human motivations and keeping to their weird science roots Spider-Man 94 manages to turn in a good season. I'd not say it tops Season Two, but it's certainly in the ballpark. And hey, given how much I love season two that's something!

Let's get what I don't like out of the way first: production quality. Dialogue was always fast on this show, but the earlier portion of Season Four is downright unpleasant to watch. Had I not known from childhood how good this season can be I'd have given up! I find it that bad! Reused animation is fourth wall breaking at this point. There were various times throughout the season I was completely jolted out of watching because the show reused a shot that made absolutely no sense. Basic animation gets trampled on, and the results are repulsive.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

Actually yes!

After a disappointing and technically irritating opening featuring Robbie Robertson, we finally get this show's version of the Black Cat. This is definitely where my nostalgia kicks in. I love every second of these two episodes. The writers kick Felicia all the way into hot shit territory and, once again, surpass the source material.

Sorry comic book Black Cat lovers: she's boring.

@ me, go ahead. You're still wrong.

This version of Felicia (and Black Cat) is a beautiful combination of dangerous, inexperienced, and playful. I could never tell what she was up to, even with the benefit of seeing the show when I was younger. Every second of her on the screen is a good one. Cat breaks down "Spider's" defenses and baggage, helping him to recover from the grief of losing MJ. Spidey finally accepts Cat as a partner, two episodes later. Kraven returns and it's great to see him again. 

And then there's the Smythe/Silvermane episode. I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing at Silvermane? But I did? Does that make me a terrible person? I don't really care. Cat was great and the reused animation was hilarious. And Silvermane's last line is worth it all. 

And my goodness, is this another two episodes of Morbius and Blade? With some damn fine work on Cat/Felicia as well? I think these are the best episodes of the season! This is another pair of episodes that just couldn't have been done earlier in the show. 

Oh, and they're actually building up the Harry subplot along the way this time! They learned!!! I love it when show runners learn from their mistakes. Harry's flip to the green side is really well done. I like how Norman manages to show up. And we also get the Punisher again, which is a most unexpected (but welcome) treat! If you're not choking up a little bit for Punisher's ray of hope at the end, then... Well, I'll have to call the battle van. Sorry.

The twist of MJ being back is so much crueler as an adult. This was such a sickening move on the writer's part. And I do mean that as a compliment.

Okay, honestly the next episode, featuring Mysterio, just isn't very good. I'm glad this season was shorter than three, but they could have cut this episode really easily and no one would have noticed. 

Yes, even with the unmasking at the end! I think just about anything else could have been done to make Peter realize he needed MJ more than anything and it would have been better.

The rest of the season is about these two deciding to love each other, regardless of cost. The rapport they build is so cool, so heartfelt, I just... Yeah. This is right in the nostalgia. I've no pretense to objective thought here. I just don't. This feels great to revisit. Even with the looming threat of the truth I can't help myself. 

They're happy.

 And they have it coming.

What the heck am I actually going to think of Season Five?

Shin Godzilla Review

 

I don’t talk about it much, but the original Godzilla really affected me as a child. Something about this unintentionally deadly monster really struck a chord with me. He wasn’t trying to destroy everything, he was just trying to live and we couldn’t let him! It was wrong that we made Godzilla, but was it wrong to kill him? Godzilla’s double victimhood hit me; he hadn’t asked to be made, and now he had to die. Something that big just shouldn’t be around. It went beyond questions of good and evil, rendering the frame utterly meaningless. 

Godzilla wasn’t bad or good. He just was.

And therefore we had to kill him. 

To say I’m disappointed by the following movies is an understatement. Godzilla is a quandary, not a hero, a critique of classic liberalism and its obvious stupidity on the face of life and death. Yea, this puts me in the grouch camp. I really couldn’t care less. Hero Godzilla is stupid.

So I was really excited when I realized that Shin Godzilla, the 2016 reboot, was being directed by Ecangelions creator, X. The Rebuilds really turned me around on X, so I figured I’d give this a shot too! Just the poster was enough; X was going for Godzilla’s original tragic roots. And that was enough for me.

What I got was a pleasant surprise: Godzilla isn’t the real monster of the movie. Oh don’t get me wrong, Godzilla is definitely disturbing. There’s something to this redesign I find… demonic isn’t the right word, but unsettling and threatening don’t really do it justice either. There’s something to Shin Godzilla’s face that is so fundamentally alien to me that I can’t help but be creeped out. The moments where he lets loose with his power are masterclasses in how to show power in a movie. I also liked how Godzilla was just as as much a victim of his biology as the humans were, having to stop and deal with his unwieldy biology.

No, the real monster is the U.S and the U.N. It’s a secret to the folks of the U.S. proper, but Japan is really just a colony of ours, in all but name. And the Japanese know it and resent it. This movie treats U.S. as a lumbering monster… that is the Japanese’s monster, protecting them from the U.N. As bad as the U.S. is the U.N. is far worse, both in the movie and in real life. No attempt is made to sugarcoat this reality; Yogucha, the protagonist, calls his country a puppet state.

And yet Japan survives because of his status as a puppet state, with the U.S. helping Japan defy the U.N. As onerous as being a colony is, Japan survived. 

It’s not bad. 

It’s not good. 

It just is.

And that’s a hard pill to swallow. 

Crescendo's First Arc: Reflections

 

I didn't realize it, but I'd been holding my breath the last few months. The first arc playtest of Crescendo has been going on and I kept asking myself "Is it going to be any good? At all?" I have a lot of ideas in this game that I was nervous wouldn't work, that would prove to be unrealistic to throw at a table. I mean, if it doesn't work that's fine... okay it wouldn't have been fine. At all. I've written a lot on this game and spent about a year fine-tuning it. And, despite the fact that the first playtest of the first arc had been going really smoothly, I didn't want to believe it. What if it failed at the end? What if the game failed to provide a good conclusion to the first arc it had ever truly run? Well, it didn't fail. There's a lot to improve and work on, but it didn't fail. Crescendo helped create a story filled with nuance and failure, character growth, a fantastical dream-like quality, truly tense plot, and a fitting coda.

Crescendo's mechanics create situations where characters must fail themselves. There are no squeaky clean and awesome characters; everyone does more than a few things they regret. As in, there are prompts generated by the game that tell you, the player, that your character fails himself, and you get to figure out what that looks like. These are profoundly humbling moments, as you have to figure out why and how your character has gone off the rails. But the other factor for the characters feeling human was that their successes could lead to unexpected consequences, in a  way that was fair and transparent, but unpredictable. The lack of total control over the plot makes the characters feel much more fragile, limited.  Because player control of the world and their characters wasn't total they took more time and care asking "What does my character really want out of this situation?" The mechanical refusal to deal in black and white results made the character's intent just that much more important.

The biggest drive to character change is failure. Because of the omnipresence of failure, as well as character change being based upon the ebb and flow of the mechanics, players are more in a role of directing the character growth. Character growth becomes the subject of the game itself, allowing players to disengage enough to where they can roleplay a character who is not like them. All the mechanics point back to the question "What does the character feel?" So many inputs into the system are subjective that you can't really get a moment where you could say "This is what the character should do." And players really responded to this! With the mechanics disengaging from a simple success/failure dynamic what the character turns into becomes the only thing the player really controls.... and the timing of that is a bit questionable as well.

Crescendo is a game of mythic fantasy. The immortals are alive and well, constantly mucking around with things, influencing the world to their own ends. Without the immortals Crescendo would be a good, if somewhat standard, fantasy game. But the addition of the immortals completely changed things for the players. Visions would just... happen. And completely recontextualize the action. Omens would appear around the players, helping them and showing them to be favored. But by whom? It wasn't entirely clear sometimes. Immortals would use similar omens, and sometimes in ways that confused the players. With the mechanics designed to keep players constantly on their toes, this existential meddling tipped the players into a world they're just certain enough about, but not too certain. There was always a dream-like quality to the story, where nothing was quite as it appeared. And that forced things back to the character, the only thing the players really had a true knowledge of.

But perhaps the biggest surprise to me was the evolution of the plot. Crescendo uses extensive journaling and a mechanic called The Black Swan: everyone at the table opens to a random page of their journal and puts their finger on a random passage; the GM takes these passages and makes up a plot twist, with the emphasis being on making an intersecting  narrative which intrudes on the players’ story. With Black Swans the GM becomes less the master of the plot and the interpreter of the signs. You can just sit back, and let the game ebb and flow around you, being just as surprised as the rest of the players at twists and turns. With the knowledge that the plot was not being "handled" by the GM, the game truly let go of the feeling that there was anything for certain. Only one question could possibly matter at that point: what did your character think of the events they had in front of them, right then and there?

Endings are beginnings where you stop. A story should have a strong end, one where the world doesn’t stop but the story does. RPGs usually don’t have ending mechanics, leaving that up to the players to figure out. Given how important endings are I’ve always found this to be a surprising hole in most designs. So I designed The Festival, which is designed to propel the world and PCs forward, while wrapping up the parts of the story that the game considers important: how the PCs and the world changed. This is done in the context of a cultural celebration. Everything has calmed down, and if you think pre-modern folks are just going to sit around and wallow in whatever just happened… well they can’t. May as well have fun! So characters get reputations and traits voted onto them, and then the players play out the scenes where they realize that their characters realized they changed. The setting is then more or less randomly moved forward, with new plot hooks being generated by the table. 

And it works beautifully.

The synergy of group discussion and in-story development produced scenes worthy of a true end to the journey the players and their characters had been on. The new plot hooks enveloped us in a feeling of constant motion, a sense that the world was moving on. The players wanted to see what happened next. Their characters had not only changed but were  given the opportunity to acknowledge it. If we could never return to this story it ended in a way we could be okay with.

Crescendo still has a ways to go. I'm testing out another first arc as we speak, which has more world building mechanics in it, at the cost of slowing the pacing of the story down, but with more depth. The second arcs won't be starting for a little while. But we ended the first arc deeply satisfied with the arc itself and excited to see where it was going. And I feel more than a bit of relief! Crescendo not only stuck the landing but did it with style.

But who cares what I think? I’m the designer, course I’m going to like my own product. What do my playtesters think? When I asked here’s what they told me:

Zac

Why play this game 

Character development. It is easy to create a living, breathing, real character. The slower pace of play really gives you time to think about your character’s actions and motivation. In fact the game demands that you do. And when things go wrong (and they will), the system gives you the time to work through how this character manages and rationalizes the events that take place resulting in a character that is far more believable and inhabitable because their decisions make sense and their motivations make sense. At least to you. There are plenty of opportunities for the GM or other players to challenge your decisions and at the end of a story arc what the other players think of you actually matters. I also enjoyed the lack of a party system. While the game is a cooperative storytelling experience, I didn’t need to worry about how my character’s growth and actions would affect the party (or split it). Also, no one else needs to feel pressured to take actions to keep the party together after my guy decides to go do his thing. While I think the party mechanic has its place in many games, particularly the combat oriented, I think many times it can also hinder your growth if an emotional revelation means the group is understaffed for an owlbear encounter.

 Martha

The first thing that jumps out about Crescendo is the rules don’t get in the way of gameplay.  So much of RPG time is spent trying to ‘outgame the game’ (think peasant rail gun). A lot of it is you vs the GM; who can make the story work better for them.  Crescendo is a collaboration between players and GM, which takes the competition out of the picture, and focuses characters and the moderator on making a good story and a good experience. Story and content is key, and the rules take a back seat. They are there to facilitate only and they aim to not be part of the problem. This is perfect for me, because I despise the dynamics between players and the GM in traditional games. I want to create a great story with them, instead of fighting for my own way every step.

    Throughout this play test the rules were changed a lot, and every single time it was because the rules were somehow blocking story development, they were too visible. Because you aren’t crunching numbers every five seconds, or pulling out power cards at every conflict, it leaves things open for creativity and collaboration in a way that mainstream RPG’s don’t. This is something that games like Trophy do marvelously, and something that is relatively hard to achieve. Unlike some other games I have played this game isn’t ‘rules light’ it’s ‘rules invisible’, which gives it the support structure of a traditional game, but all the flexibility and creativity of a game like Trophy. While Crescendo mirrors some concepts from games like Burning Wheel, they are combined with original concepts, and reworked themes from different games that work in a pretty great symmetry.

    Almost all stats and numbers are developed outside the actual game, and you have to pay attention to at most one number of your own, and help from others, that’s it. To top it off, the black swan mechanic helps develop the story in a completely random fashion (which is very realistic) but still pulls from the past sessions and lore to make it relevant and somewhat consistent. You know that something is going to happen, but you know that inevitably it will happen in line with the rest of the story. It makes for some pretty great plot developments. 

    The last thing I would like to mention about the mechanics is the journaling.  Everyone has a different style of journaling, and often they write it in the voice of their character.  This makes read throughs and black swans very interesting, because you’ll catch a line or a story from a different character’s perspective, and it makes you question how that interaction actually went down. This coupled with the vision mechanic makes for some very interesting interactions, and developments. 

    As to the story itself, it was a lot of fun.  You can spend quite a lot of time on a pretty simple scene and still feel like it is full of action, questions, and plot development. Several of our sessions took place over several hours but only really covered a couple of minutes in actual game time, but you didn’t really notice it, and it was still pretty satisfying. There are several different ways to play characters in this game. You can defy your traits and drives and constantly be putting yourself into confusing circumstances, or you can play them up and call upon a whole new set of crises. My character in particular stayed super true to her ideals and self and ended up in a place that she really didn’t want to be, even though she did everything just about perfect for her traits.  On the other hand, another character really played with his traits, and ended up getting exactly what he wanted.  But I could absolutely see it working the other way around, making for a bunch of story possibilities in the future. 

    Altogether this was a very satisfying and productive play test and I’m looking forward to  more!

Bryan

Crescendo Review.

How would I describe a game like Crescendo? In short it is fun unique form of table top RPG that I have not seen the likes of before. It is extremely different from D&D removing the combat heavy focus of gameplay for a game centrally focused on character development. In fact, the game the heavily reminds me of Burning Wheel, another game that the Nathan has GMed, and that I have had the pleasure to play with him. However, I think personally that Crescendo improves upon Burning Wheel. For instance, the belief and instincts mechanic on Burning Wheel can feel a bit overwhelming, while the drive system of Crescendo is stream-lined and far more manageable. Another thing that has jumped up at me, is dice rolling system. Instead of rolling a standard D20 for everything like in D&D, this game has you rolling different types of dice depending on your stats. (BTW the highest dice I have rolled in this game is a D12)

The Story of Crescendo has been a blast. While Nathan at times tries a more hands off approach to storytelling, allowing for more player input then some other GMs would, He still manages to weave together an epic that keeps players coming back. One of my personal favorite moments in the game so far has been when Roisto, one of the PCs threw the Captain of the Dragonslayers overboard while the palming the Shard of Typhon (BLOGGER’S NOTE: The Shard of Typhon is a Macguffin that can bring back Typhon, the king of monsters, radically changing the world) over to him. The result led to complete chaos where we realized we may have just doomed everyone. Of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without one Crescendos most central features, The Black Swan. This concept of reading our own personal journal experience, (which is another thing that make this game unique; taking notes of what your character is doing has an actual gameplay mechanic to it) makes the twist feel more appreciative since the player actively contribute to it. 

To sum up, Crescendo is a game that I highly recommend to anyone wanting to try something new. It forces you to take your character seriously and you’ll be surprised what kind of changes your character and yourself will go through 

Thank you to three of you. Crescendo is a much stronger game because of your generosity with your time! 

If you want to see where Crescendo is at now click here to join the Discord and get access to the alpha version!

Gollum Always Trips

When I woke up this morning something felt off. It got under my radar, of course. It has for the last six years. As the day goes on I just… sour. My mood begins to swing suddenly. I’ll lose my temper faster than I’d like. Little twitches in my peripheral vision start making me nervous. It’s the day of a thousand paper cuts. 

And then the bottom drops out. 

And I’m staring that dammed darkness in the face, once again. 

I try to ignore it. Really, I do! But that’s not a paper cut I’m dealing with anymore. Now I’m dealing with a full on emotional gut wound. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop the memories. The horror.

And oh God the rage. It feels so good. 

Most days I’d just melt before this awful waterfall of rage and pain. Fold up shop. Disengage. Disassociate. I’ve been doing this since I was six, I’m an old hand at it by now! What’s one more time? Why not just zone out, let myself go and surrender, again?

Why not?

Why?

Why was it different this time?!?? Why couldn’t I quit??

Because now a part of me refused to budge: “No,” it said. “Not again. I’m not leaving my family, my friends, myself. I refuse.”

“Fuck you, I’m in pain!” I found myself whispering back. “I need this.”

“Not as much as they need you.”

And there it was. When the hell had I become so altruistic? It had never stopped me before! I grew angry. And then afraid. What would happen to me now?? How was this happening and how could I stop it? “I DONT CARE WHO I HURT YOU’RE IN MY WAY.”

That’s not true, said a small, still voice. You’ve always cared. But you let your fear get in the way. 

“Yeah, so???”

That makes you a coward, doesn’t it?

“Fuck you!”

That doesn’t make Me wrong. 

I sat there a moment. “So what do I do?”

Come die with Me. I Am dead. I sit here, in the land of the dead, waiting. The yoke is easy. The burden light. Come and suffer and die. 

“FUCK YOU NO”

Something will die regardless of what you do. Would you like it to be your connection to your wife, children, friends, Me? Or will you finally see what’s on the other side? Will you come and be dead with Me?

I’m not entirely sure what happened the next hour. I know I walked and raved like a lunatic, the pain causing my jaw to disengage and work on its own. I don’t remember much. The pain was insanity itself, driving me deeper and deeper into somewhere that…

There was a light. 

Somewhere, deep down in this horror, there was the tiniest of lights in my soul. And it sputtered. And waved. But it held. Defiant. Beautiful. 

This is all that was left. You almost put it out. 

I cupped the light in my hands and blew softly, coaxing it. Begging. Pleading. With it. That made the pain so much worse. But I couldn’t. This was all I had left. And I knew I couldn’t leave it. Not again.

There was a blaze of white light in my mind.

And now the pain is back. The storm in my soul is at a fever pitch. But I hold a little light in my left hand, glowing a gentle white in my mind. The pain is so much worse than I ever thought it could be. 

Storms end. 

But if I give up this one won’t. 

It may be a fool’s errand. But looking at the existential wreckage within what else am I but the greatest of fools? It a fool’s hope, that I can be fixed. It’s a fool’s hope, to beg for mercy when I can see the damage I’ve done myself. I don’t deserve mercy. No rational being would give me any, not after what I’ve done. It’s foolish to even think the words.

That suits me perfectly. Gollum does trip, after all. No, I don’t count the dumbass movie. Gollum always trips. 

A fool’s hope is enough. For now. It’s just a matter of time  

There are two people I’d like to dedicate this post to. The first is my wife, who keeps telling me I’m worth keeping around. I’m not even close to really believing her, but she seems to mean it to herself and that’s a damned sight better than I ever noticed before. You’re everything to me, darling. Thank you. 

The second person is highly unlikely to ever read this, but she’s been singing her heart out to the first song the last month. Thank you for writing it and for continuing to sing it, years later. I don’t think I would have known to look without your song.